Wednesday, July 2, 2014

On the sporting arena – there is perhaps one
common thing between French Open and Wimbledon
and that is on ‘air’ ….. so everyday, in the mornings from 5am to 9 am – it is
flown .. ? ~ at Rolandgarros – the most fiercest battle was not between players
but was on air !!

‘have eyes like a hawk’ is a phrase – meaning that ‘the one’s who posses such eyes notice everything’

…….. in Sports, ‘Hawk-Eye’ is a
complex computer system used officially in cricket, tennis, soccer- to visually track the trajectory of the ball
and display a record of its statistically most likely path as a moving image. It is another matter that technology too drowns India
sometimes….. In 2011 WC in a group match – Yuvraj struck Bell
plumb – Billy Bowden turned down the appeal.
Dhoni went in for review. The TV
replays showed that it was not a no ball, was in line of the stumps and would
have struck the middle of the stumps.
Crowd roared and Bell
started trudging back.

He was only
17. When everyone believed out, the
third umpire after watching things on a slow motion ruled Bell not out taking umbrage under a 2.5M
rule. !!!

Pigeons are commonly found on Temples
– the walls of Sri Parthasarathi
SwamiTemple
have them in large numbers. I have posted about thousands of pigeons turning
out in the sands of Marina
every morning for the feed that are offered by a group of people. Have been
posting about Wimbledon – Lendl once remarked
‘grass is for cows’ …. The grass seed on
tennis courts is like caviar to pigeons; Pigeons have a very advanced olfactory
navigation system so they can smell the grass from far away, and the Wimbledon roofs are the perfect roosting ground.

These powerful birds have four types of colour receptors
in the eye which give birds the ability to perceive not only the visible range
but also the ultraviolet part of the spectrum, and other adaptations allow for
the detection of polarised light or magnetic fields ~ and they scare smaller
birds, especially the pigeons … it is the hawk - a common name for some small
to medium-sized diurnal birds of prey, widely distributed and varying greatly
in size. Hawks have become a popular means of pigeon control – they don’t hurt
them, but they do stop them from building nests in buildings. The birds were
used at the Euro 2012 Championships and are often employed by residents of
particularly well-heeled streets ~ one
such is employed at Wimbledon and also works at Westminster Abbey, where he was
a constant presence in the run-up to last year’s royal wedding, as well as at
various hospitals.

At Rolandgarros where there was battle for the number one
spot between Nadal and Djokovic, there was avian problem. Apparently so many pigeon droppings have been
landing on the court affecting play on
the clay courts. Balls bounce differently off the slimy droppings and they are
just plain gross to deal with. Officials were so fed up with the bird
excrements that they tried to scare the birds away with noise over the loud
speakers, but to no avail. Finally they decided to bring eight falcons to
Roland Garros in hopes the predator birds will get rid of the pigeons. Falconer
Ludwig Verschatse said his birds didn’t actually kill any pigeons, just scared
them away from the stadium. New York
had a similar problem with pigeon droppings in the subway earlier this year,
and solved it by simply playing the sounds of predator birds around subway
entrances.

"We're bringing one of the oldest art forms to an
urban environment," says Imogen Davis, a falconer whose hawks guard Wimbledon as well as hospitals, landfills and a rugby
stadium. At Wimbledon,
besides the names of Andy Murray, Djokovic, Federer, Nadal, Wawrinka; Serena,
Li Na, Simona Halep, Radwanska, Maria Sharapova – is Rufus. He is
not one who handles racket – it is a woodland hawk who prevents Wimbledon from being overrun by pigeons. Rufus patrols the skies above Wimbledon from 5am to 9am every day, scaring off pigeons,
which love to feast on the courts’ grass seeds. According to his handler, Imogen Davis, “We
use Rufus as a nonlethal deterrent, so he flies when he’s not hungry enough to
eat the pigeons, but not full enough to ignore them either.”

Rufus the hawk was stolen in 2012 and it
made big news – with best of the detectives put to trace – it was eventually
returned to its owners.